An interesting additional fact is that though the Japanese did almost no exporting of handsets, the story could hardly have been more different in cellphone components.

FORBES: Unraveling the Cellphone Industry's Biggest Mystery

The biggest drop in real interest rates has been in America, where growth of almost 6% in the fourth quarter of 1998 hardly points to imminent deflation.

ECONOMIST: The new danger

Of course, giving users almost any song they want for a monthly fee is hardly a new idea.

FORBES: Spotify Puts Apple On The Spot

These are hardly excessive growth rates in normal times, much less in an economy with almost 10 percent unemployment, with capacity utilization down from the 80s to the 60s, and with nonbank credit sinking, productivity growing rapidly, and with unit labor cost declining.

FORBES: Where's The Inflation Threat?

This is hardly a revelation: we and the coalition have been learning to live with economic disappointments almost since day one.

BBC: An economic mid-term review

It was almost a century before an enterprising Frenchman actually traveled to the site in 1889 and found that there were hardly even any hills there.

WSJ: Lost in Our Maps: A History of Cartographic Catastrophes